Whoever Doesn’t Really Try, Consents

Mass symbolic, sanctioned marches that do nothing to actually change the status quo serve as painless absolution rituals, that allow the participants to “bear witness”, to “speak truth to power” and to “wash their hands of the blood of empire.” Marches, with their biting satire and snazzy costumes, do not provide a real means for stopping the carnage they deplore. A “functioning” democracy needs some form of sanctioned, orderly protest to stimulate discussion, and if the current regime were really “that bad” they wouldn’t allow big demonstrations, right? Ineffective activism, like regulated marches, actually provides a façade of healthy interchange and is welcomed by the status quo. The majority of demonstrators are aware well in advance that their actions will likely have no tangible effect on the negative of the empire, but they go to a huge rally and can sleep better at night having chanted out their guilt. Just as it can be said qui tacet consentive videtu (whoever is silent consents) it can also be said “whoever doesn’t really try, consents.”

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anarchafairy

These are my musings, take them as they are.

I'm from Te Whanganui a Tara, Aotearoa. My main project is publishing radical literature from the deep South Pacific as part of Rebel Press, and also the irregular anarchist journal imminent rebellion.

12 comments

sandpit politics… you’re allowed to fuck shit up, just a little bit, make a little bit of mess, but not too much… or muck up day at school [dunno if you kiwis have that, it’s the last day of school where you’re allowed to have a little bit of well supervised crazyness as your reward for sitting quiet & being brainwashed the whole year.] or… like the kids table at weddings & xmas… you can make a mess coz it all gets thrown away later. it’s just expected. kidsl be kids & grow out of it soon…

I actually think that u are forgetting that not every person who supports change and disagrees with government/corporate policies has the freedom to run around smashing things up and recklessly breaking the law “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need (or needs)”
Torrance if u are suggesting that unless someone is prepared to ‘risk it all’ for anarchism they are consenting I think you are way off the mark. For some taking the first step to be apart of social change may be about joining a protest march or rally and u can not say that solidarity amongst people isn’t a good thing.
I find your “only one way and only mine’ to be a little disconcerting at times. Sorry hun, had to say this.

I should be clear that I DON’T agree with the title of the article mentioned in the blog (there’s a lot of reasons people don’t or can’t resist, and they often have nothing to do with consent!), but I do agree with its critique of symbolic action.

“not every person who supports change and disagrees with government/corporate policies has the freedom to run around smashing things up and recklessly breaking the law”

And obviously. But this isn’t what I’m suggesting as the alternative, and I must admit that I get quite annoyed with the assumption that direct action means small groups doing hardcore fucking-shit-up type actions (I’ve got this response all through Happy Valley stuff).

When I first got involved with anarchist stuff I was still pretty clueless and generally retarded, but I could never get my head around the point of marches. I didn’t understand what they were doing. Ths xmas I was talking to my brother (who’s totally apolitical) as to why he doesn’t care; he quite simply said “you know, and most people know, that marching down a street isn’t going to do jack”.

This is what I’m saying. I think it’s actually really pretty insulting to people when we organise marches simply because its a form of “nice action” that we know will do jack… and expect them not to realise this too! (of course they do!)

Rather than running around smashing shit up, I suggested in my blog on marches that instead we should look to creative actions that are both direct, effective AND inviting for mass participation, as opposed to doing a political ritual that nobody really understands and everybody knows is pointless. Surely we can come up with something?!

I kinda feel that RTS is also another tactic that was originally a really conscious engagement with the contemporary political situation (in Britain as a part of the massive anti-roading campaign, in response to roading developments, banning of public raves and other gatherings), but has since been kinda fetishised and has lost its purpose in a lot of other settings. Here in NZ, RTS (road occupation is maybe a better word) has been done several times, but in the ones here in Wellington I’ve seen I’m not sure if the organisers have actually understood the tactic’s role in their campaign (ie. anti-bypass) or not… sometimes it feels like “oo, let’s do what they’re doing”.

Having said that, I fully advocate a massive road occupation of arterial routes in NZ cities come the next invasion NZ is part of.

I sort of think this misses the point of marches. There is a tendency among anarchists to see marches as a form of direct action, and as such, they are obviously a failure.

The real point of marches is as a tool for movement building – they get a whole lot of people together, which can be empowering in itself, and provide an easy way for people to make their first step towards involvement in activism.

If activists treat marches as the be all and end all (“OK, we’ve had a demo, now go home”. as, for example, the unions did during the anti-Employment Contracts Act campaign), they are going to be useless , if they are treated as a step on the way to organising a movement and followed up with decent organising, they are very effective.

There haven’t been many marches in recent years, and I can’t say activist movements seem anu better off for it.

oh i understand, english first my language not [i’m australian] but then you are foreign 🙂 … i was thinking about radical actions in the US, UK & Aus BEFORE welfare was introduced – & how tame things seem after. pre-New Deal post-New Deal industrial actions in the US for eg. If welfare is a bribe not to challenge the state in anything other than a symbolic or token way… for eg. with big marches…? no worries, i mite wac some fuzzy thoughts into an actual proper post, with proper words & proper paragraphs & everything, just like you kids… s11 = anti-WEF blockades in Melb 2000 – i just did some research [ie google search] & couldn’t find anything worth posting up here, but now you know what i was referring to.

I think you’ve got it there Sam, marches do have the ability to bring lots of people together who share a common goal, even sometimes just smaller numbers, and this does count for something, they are a way of building a common voice and creating solidarity.

Yeah, I reckon creating solidarity and feeling strong is important. Some marches, loud ones, do leave people feeling strong.

I guess if this is the idea behind marches then sweet… but I think more often than not it is not done in this spirit. I think more often than not it is still a knee-jerk ritual response, and people expect through the media spectacle the march to do something in itself…

Like Sam said, it needs to be a step toward building confidence in doing action, and I think that action has to be real and in the immediate future, or else we do end up falling into the trap of eternally building the movement.

Sam, I reckon there’s been heaps of marches – in 4 years I think I’ve been on maybe 25 or 30…

a lot of marches are quite small, and are just marches that are pretty much the same everytime – march (plackards, banners, angryangry chant, speeches – – leave go home) with maybe an arrest added in. there are good things about them – but alone no marches will stop any war or fix anything.
maybe its partly the apathy in nz, and small population and apoliticalness of so many ppl~ i think the problem can be that not much happens in between marches and meetings.